Which meant she could learn. Learn to see them. Learn to appreciate them.
They might as well start now. “I imagine she’s in the kitchen or thereabouts. If not, Mrs. Dawe will know where she’s tucked herself. Let’s go and find her.”
“In the kitchen.” Emily stood, but from sheer obedience, Beth suspected.
Libby hid her smile in the kitten’s fur. She’d grown up in the same position as Emily, after all—an earl’s daughter—but had far different opinions on appropriate interactions with her staff. Mabena had been serving as her lady’s maid for two years but had also become her friend. That was how she’d ended up here for the summer, falling in love with Mabena’s cousin.
Beth glanced—again, what was wrong with her?—at Sheridan. He probably had stuffier opinions than any of them about such hierarchy. He was a marquess, after all. Below only a duke in the peerage. Two rungs down the ladder from a prince.
But he was grinning, too, and elbowing Telford. “She must have one of those unicorns. You know—the ones who don’t lecture. Don’t let Ainsley rub off on her then, my lady. He’ll have your Briggs giving you sermons by week’s end.”
Beth lifted her brows. She’d met Ainsley, of course. He had a calm, steady spirit that shone from his eyes. “I can’t imagine him lecturing.”
Sheridan snorted. “He does. Such an expert at it, he rarely even needs words. Right, Telly?”
It being before noon, Telford merely grunted.
Emily frowned. “Forgive me, my lord, but if he’s given to lecturing and sermonizing, why do you keep him on? My father would never suffer such audacity from a valet.”
Sheridan opened his mouth, closed it, shrugged. Then tried again. “Because he’s Ainsley. Everyone needs an Ainsley in their lives. If I didn’t have his lectures keeping me straight, just imagine the mess I’d be.”
Perhaps, aside from being a thief, Sheridan wasn’t so bad. But that was a revelation she could ponder at her leisure later. For now, the kitchen. She linked her arm through Emily’s and tugged her toward the dining room’s exit, following Senara’s invisible path. “Let’s pay Briggs that visit.”
Emily made no argument—until they were in the corridor, at which point she leaned close and whispered, “Are you certain this is a good idea, Beth? I don’t think Briggs will appreciate us imposing upon her like this. I am certain she does have friends among the rest of the staff, but that life is to be kept separate from her service. And the same in reverse. The very thought of asking for such a personal favor . . .”
“Em.” She halted them halfway between library and kitchen and looked her friend straight in the eye. “Do you want out of all this? To just apologize to your brother and go home again? I realize we didn’t present it as a choice, but it is. You don’t have to be here, working with us. It’s only treasure. It isn’t worth sacrificing your family relationships for.”
It was the truth, hard as it was to say. Beth had given months of her life to this treasure hunt, put her family in danger for it. But then, that was why she was so invested. Why she couldn’t back out now. It was different for Emily, though. She had nothing at stake, and their friendship probably shouldn’t be so valuable to her that she’d trade her place in her family for it.
Emily let her gaze drop for a long moment, a million thoughts parading across her expressive face. When she spoke, it was still in a whisper. “All my life, he’s resented my very existence and tried his best to make me miserable. All my life, I’ve been less in my parents’ eyes than him, simply because I’m a girl.” Her eyes came up again. They were the same green that Beth had found striking in Nigel’s face, and yet they looked nothing like his. There was no filter of charm. No pretense. Just bare pain still hardening into determination. “He’s got away with so much, Beth. So many people he’s misused and mistreated and hurt, and our parents have always helped him cover it up and get away with it. If I can’t stand up to him, what chance does anyone else have? How will he ever be stopped? Or ever learn a different way?”
Beth clasped her hand, squeezed it hard. She couldn’t imagine having a family like the Scofields. Couldn’t imagine a brother who didn’t champion and adore her—and tease her, yes, and try to find her nonexistent diary, and always make her feel guilty for wanting to taste more of life than the isles could offer. But Morgan and Oliver only acted as they did because they loved her. And never in her life had she had cause to doubt it. “So, you’re with us?”
Another long silence, another million thoughts on her face. Another layer of determination over the pain. Then she nodded. “Let’s go and talk to Briggs.”
Senara pulled the bread from the oven with a long, happy inhale, hurrying the pans onto the stovetop before the heat could burn through the protective towel in her hands. Two loaves, fluffy and golden and perfect, were a testament to the early morning of laughter and kneading and earnest, honest work that she’d put in before joining the ladies and gents.
“Oh, that smells divine.” Tommie Briggs was at her elbow, her smiling face wreathed in freckles. “If none of the masters favor the heel, I claim one. I can already taste it with your mother’s strawberry preserves and a pat of butter.”
Senara laughed and shut the oven door before its heat could do more than dampen the curls at her temples. She wasn’t certain where Ainsley and Collins had taken themselves this morning, but it had been just the girls in the kitchen when she bustled in a few minutes ago to check her loaves—not that Mam would have let them burn. “I can’t speak for the visiting lords, but Ollie and Beth never cared for the heel, and Mrs. Tremayne always joked that it was the fairies’ portion, so it oughtn’t to be eaten.”
“Which,” Mam put in from the table, “was her way of saying she didn’t like it either. You’re welcome to one, Tommie.”
Tas would claim another, no doubt, when he came in from the grounds for his midday bite. That would be in another twenty minutes or so, if he stuck to the pattern he’d observed all her life.
Senara drew in another yeasty, golden breath. And wished she could just enjoy this—the everyday, the routine, the simple and lovely—without the specter of the unknown looming before her. When did Rory mean to show up? When he finally did, she’d have a few questions for him.
In the meantime, she was determined to impress his cousin, which was as close as she could currently get to making a good impression on his mother and sister. But she was finding that Ainsley and Rory were about as different as two cousins could be. Where Rory was all energy and passion, Ainsley was steady and stoic. She had no idea what he thought of her, or if he even knew that she would soon be his cousin by marriage.
But Rory had surely mentioned her. Hadn’t he?
“There she is.”
At Beth’s voice, Senara and Tommie both turned round, though Tommie’s smile froze on her lips. Beth wasn’t alone in the kitchen doorway. She had Lady Emily with her.
Tommie dipped a quick curtsy, transforming instantly from bread-craving young woman into emotionless lady’s maid. “My lady, forgive me. Did you have need of me?”